Let's Settle This! What Wrench & Socket Design Will Slip 1st?

[Music] welcome back to the torque test channel this is our third episode featuring hand tools you guys keep watching them and suggesting more stuff to test so we're going to keep making them today we see how much better a six-point wrench is or socket versus an open-end wrench on soft and imperfect fasteners but also and maybe more controversially how 12-point and spline designs compare to those two in performance the results sort of speak for themselves on this one so stay tuned while we were working on the first half of this uncle himself decided to test 12 point versus six point wrenches to failure two and he showed that both are plenty strong versus the right fastener and likely to yield at similar amounts of punishment but outside of tool failure how much grippy grippy can you expect to get from one of these tools on let's say non-perfect hardware basically how likely are these tools to slip on something soft undersized or rusty on brand new large bolt heads maybe you don't need to be picky but if you're starting a tool collection what should you be leaning towards to work on everything and with the big man himself even giving his blessing for us to extract some more data on the subject let's dive in basically what you're looking at here are wrenches made from the same brand of different designs after some research online i couldn't find one brand that makes all three different types on our wrench but we have a gear wrench in both 12 point and six point one is longer pattern but should be pretty irrelevant on the business end and craftsman who makes 12 point and spline drive theoretically within a brand is the best way to measure the performance of one design versus another a snap on six point beating a pittsburgh 12 point for instance wouldn't mean much so if we do see a difference it's more likely to be a design advantage one then we also have sockets this time all three designs on one brand which i found in the powerbuilt brand sold at many auto parts stores these are six point 12 point and spline which is only sold in a set not individually so we bought the set and sort of just took it out but stay tuned to the end where we add some more usa made wrenches that really help complete the picture we're making here every tool used today is the same size because the hardware we're tightening today is our beloved coupling nuts made from as soft steel as you're gonna find on any hardware and these are great because the thread size internally half inch coarse threaded onto grade eight bolts here is quite large compared to the outside hex so the threads won't be the weak point just slipping on that outside hex which is what we want to make these already soft nuts even closer to the messed up stuff you might run into we're going to do some good old-fashioned precision rounding of them using a jig next to a table top grinder we're going to bring these down to 60 rounded that is the difference between the flats and the corners is about 0.01 inches maybe 97 thou we're going to remove 40 of that foul or make 40 rounded in this case and just for your info all the wrenches and sockets tested today tested to the max of these coupling nuts when the nuts were not rounded but 40 that's not too crazy some wrench designs are made to work on 70 to 80 rounded stuff so let's get into it we're gonna keep this dyno in bolt tension pounds psi for finer resolution but for your reference that works out to 11 to one in the foot-pound scale and that stays pretty linear since some of you were curious this rig even set up with this half-inch coarse thread like here is pretty sensitive just the plastic socket hang tag can register some torque on it up first is the craftsman we're going to take a look at the open end first realistically these should be the worst option but provide the most access and we just want to know the difference between it a box end and a socket since really that could be an episode in itself so let's pack it into this one so 467 before it slipped and sort of stuck which we have no idea whether that's any good or not let's see the craftsman 12 point box end to find out box and wrenches are what we and probably you use to break bolts free when a ratchet or breaker bar won't fit frankly how this part performs on less than amazing shallow bolt heads is pretty important stuff given the abuse hours see so already well past the open end which makes sense and that's 1309 psi which works out to 119 foot pounds on a rounded 3 16 bolt now for the spline really getting to the heart of the issue now yes the 12 point worked but is spline better from the same brand worse by how much one thing we noticed with all spline tools today is that at least on these soft coupling nuts you can sort of feel them bite into the hex nut which feels in person like a tiny slip than a stop and it feels much firmer after that and here's evidence of that very slight slip and bite it gets a bit attached but that process is effective beyond the 12 point here and up to 1578 before basically machining this thing down into a circle that's 143 foot-pounds it's good stuff i'll admit i've always skipped over the spline stuff as it seemed a bit gimmicky to me but so far might be eating my words our next test is with the same style of wrenches but 12 point versus 6 point from gearwrench here's the open end the craftsman made 467 in this test it's with the same new hardware and wrench size the gearwrench felt a bit more confident in its bite here and climbed to 761 above the craftsman and not all bad considering the 12 point on the other hand brought some surprises that's right making it only up to 422 below its own open end side on the same very wrench and i tested this again with my own gearwrench combination wrench backing those results up with the same sort of disappointment hopefully the six point gear wrench has better luck and that 12 points shocked me a bit i've certainly slipped my wrenches on bolt heads before with the gear wrench and just assumed that's 12 point being 12 point but the gearwrench scored well under the craftsman and this 6 point is putting in work easily passing the other two wrench end designs and piling on the psi up to way up to 1409 of those psis which works out to 128 foot pounds before sort of camming off the nut despite our best efforts to keep it on straight that's a pretty dramatic spread making me rethink my gearwrench spanners not sure if it's enough to push me towards six point on a wrench as that's a whole lot of extra degrees of swinging to fit it onto an awkwardly clocked bolt head but with one tool that that shouldn't be a problem on is a socket a socket on a wrench you just turn it with your fingers a few clicks and the six point will be working a treat again which makes you wonder sometimes why do people have 12 point chrome sockets well there are 12 point bolt heads like on connecting rods and head bolts and on larger stuff like axle nuts that need them we've never really seen a performance difference stuff that big just less likely to round in the first place when we're talking that size fastener but how likely are we talking especially on smaller stuff let's find out we're marking here on the nut where the wrench depth ends so that it's an apples to apples comparison at full depth these all outperform the wrenches which we've just confirmed that but you likely won't have that amount of depth to bite on a bolt head especially an ugly looking one here's the powerbuilt 12 point socket this one felt confidence in its bite from the 12 point but it met its end quite suddenly and called it a day at 573 not altogether impressive versus the wrenches and here's the spline the spline was the same deal sort of good until it wasn't 530 about the same as the 12 point not super conclusive between the two there now for the six point the six point felt gummier and would stick onto the coupling nut but it brought the beans climbing past and frankly embarrassing the 12 point and spline sockets doing well to keep its depth similar to a wrench the six point brought the largest contrast between the same brand designs that we've seen yet with 1580 maxing out this hex nut the nut was actually collapsing on itself and squishing the two ends closer to each other at the end there at 150 foot-pounds something the craftsman spline wrench was starting to do as well so before we throw an audible and add some last few wrenches for a good reason let's see what the data we've collected looks like we have our three brands here designs here open end 12 point spline and six point then which one did best from each set and how far off the other designs were from it basically between these three options splined it best and by this much between these the six point did best by this much and between the 12 6 and splines six point did best by this much here but we weren't happy enough with this amount of data to total the findings yet so we made a community post asking you guys if you know of a brand that makes all three designs on one wrench and one of you pointed out proto so appreciate that and with some more hardware and wrenches ordered this should really round out our data finally including a well-known usa made brand we get all three designs like we did from the sockets plus an open end though you're certainly paying extra for those bespoke 6 and spline end wrenches so let's see if this follows the trends we've been seeing so far or if we're just shooting in the dark here the open end didn't feel amazing but it did make up to 734 psi or 67 foot pounds the best so far on that end can't complain the 12 point should be higher than that but if so by how much let's see it slips a bit early at 920 or so wasn't able to improve on that and now is just even more rounded theoretically to match what we've seen spline should be better than that in contrast to my assumptions so let's see it yet again the spline proto does outshine the 12 point and makes it past makes it look quite easy too though maybe a bit stuck on there in the process if that doesn't stop it from making past 1400 where it does and some of its classic machining of the hex into a circle here as well six point box end up next and it has a mountain to climb here the six point feels very no nonsense sort of like just using it on a brand new bolt to begin with even with the wrench extension on there like it could make it to 200 foot pounds without a care in the world it did make it up near 1600 psi or that 145 to 150 foot pounds again before the nut started to compress on itself but there really was no end in sight for this one so again score one for the six point category i'm sure many of you assumed it might go down like this some people aren't sure others just know from experience that 12 point particularly on smaller bolts and the worse it looks turn stuff with flats sort of into stuff with rounds real quick but how much better it was in a controlled setting and more specifically versus spline i had no idea so let's take a look in summary as well averaged across each tool with the design that works out to 60 foot-pounds for open-end wrenches better than i expected 70 foot-pounds for 12 point a lot closer than i expected there remember this is on just rounded stuff then that jumps to 107 foot-pounds for spline and that's quite a jump and 139 foot-pounds with a w in every test that featured it is the six point the reigning champ and by exactly how much assuming we're not incompetent and six point is best then in the same testing method spline is 23 off of that 12 point is 47 percent off of six point and using the open end in a pinch where it's required it's just about under half as good as six point now spline still doesn't give me the warm and fuzzies call me old school but it's hard to argue with the data tools slip when they slip they don't really care about how new and different they are or how much you question them i'll just say on average across multiple brands and countries of origin on spline i'm probably just wrong and that's the takeaway you should have on imperfect maybe rusty maybe let's say a lube tech saw before you sort of bolt heads on new hardware maybe grade 5 grade 8 hardware non-rusty climates maybe it won't make as much difference to you especially as you go up in both size but if you're about to drop 200 plus on a ratcheting box and wrench set and plan to only buy that once because let's face it we've all broken bolts loose with those you might just want a design that's going to work for you on most things that you see rather than to have to buy another set and switch out tools during a job because some bolt is looking at you funny appreciate you joining us for this one recommend more hand tools and test types below in the comments click subscribe to catch those and thanks as always for watching [Music] you

Channel: Torque Test Channel

Views: 1,239,635

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Id: pX4uHYEPOuY

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Fri May 27 2022